CROMARTY, police burgh, parish and seaport, Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. Pop. (1931) 1,232, excluding men of the Royal Navy. It is situated on the southern shore of the mouth of Cromarty Firth, 5 m. E. by S. of Invergordon on the opposite coast, with which there is daily communication by steamer, and 9 m. N.E. of Fortrose, the most convenient railway station. Before the union of the shires of Ross and Cromarty, it was the county town of Cromartyshire. Its name gave the title to the earldom of Cromarty. The harbour is a naval station ; but the herring fishery, once the staple industry, has failed; some white fishing is carried on. The town, however, is in growing repute as a sum mer resort. The thatched house with crow-stepped gables in Church Street, in which Hugh Miller the geologist was born, still stands, and a statue has been erected to his memory on a hill above the town.
The former shire of Cromarty was incorporated with Ross shire in 1889 under the designation of the county of Ross and Cromarty. Its nucleus consisted of the lands of Cromarty in the north of the peninsula of the Black Isle. To this were added from time to time the various estates scattered throughout Ross shire—the most considerable of which were the districts around Ullapool and Little Loch Broom on the Atlantic coast, the area in which Ben Wyvis is situated, and a tract to the north of Loch Fannich—which had been acquired by the ancestors of Sir George Mackenzie (1630-1714), afterwards Viscount Tarbat (1685) and I st earl of Cromarty (1703) . Desirous of combining these properties into one shire, Viscount Tarbat was enabled to procure their annexation to his sheriffdom of Cromarty in 1685 and 1698, the area of the enlarged county amounting to nearly 37o sq.m. (See Ross AND CROMARTY.) Cromarty Firth.—Cromarty Firth, an inlet of the North Sea, extends inland for 19 m. from Moray Firth in a westerly and then south-westerly direction. Except at the Bay of Nigg, on the northern shore, and Cromarty bay, on the southern, where it is about 5 m. wide (due north and south), and at Alness bay, where it is 2 m. wide, it has an average width of 1 m. and a depth varying from 5 to I o fathoms, forming one of the safest and most commodious anchorages in the north of Scotland. The principal places on its shores are Dingwall near the head, Cromarty near the mouth, Kiltearn, Invergordon and Kilmuir on the north. The entrance is guarded by two precipitous rocks—the one on the north 400 ft., that on the south 463 ft. high—called the Sutors from a fancied resemblance to a couple of shoe-makers (Scots, souter), bending over their lasts. The erection of defences for the naval base was begun in 1912, and the base was used through out the World War.